John Barth

Back in the 1960s and '70s John Barth strode the earth like a lion — or, better yet, a chimera, that monster of Greek mythology made up of parts from other monsters. He was a kind of monster himself, laying waste to such traditional narrative...

Back in the 1960s and '70s John Barth strode the earth like a lion -- or, better yet, a chimera, that monster of Greek mythology made up of parts from other monsters. He was a kind of monster himself, laying waste to such traditional narrative verities...

There's no one right way to write a life story. You can arrange it in chapters or as a series of vignettes. You can present it with or without illustrations. You can approach it from the outside looking in, as found in most biographies. Or you can tell it...

By Ed Park Looking backward, briefly: It went unremarked that 2007 was the year when the weirdness of time dilation hit Sgt. William Mandella. Battling the far-flung Taurans meant interstellar travel via "collapsars" (black holes); two years of army...

What better beach companion than a quick read with witty characters, mildly surprising plot twists, concise chapters and just enough conflict to remind you how happy you are to be on vacation? As an added bonus, try one of these books that unfolds against...

The advertisement is yellowed and torn, but its message is clear. Beans canned by Cambridge's Phillips Packing Company have "that down in Dixie flavor." The statement appears below an image of a large African-American woman wearing a headscarf and holding...

Ask most people what they associate with the Johns Hopkins University, and they'll respond "health care." But the nearly 4,000 undergraduates enrolled at this elite university know better. Hopkins has some of the nation's top programs in international...

Little Washington College wields heavy literary weight. Nestled in historic Chestertown, this private school of 1,200 students annually awards the nation's largest undergraduate literary prize, topping $65,000 in 2002 with no strings attached. Who said...

Two Weeks Before the Debut of Her New Play, Snakes: "Don't tell anyone," Cherie Vogelstein confides, "but I haven't written it yet." That's dismaying, given the importance of the event. It's mid-fall, and Snakes is to premiere in New York City at the...

The Eastern Shore and art? To most outsiders, that usually means only one thing: ducks. Duck paintings. Duck sculptures. Duck decoys. But look beyond the surface and you'll discover a region that's redefining itself -- quite rightly -- as a serious arts...

While you may be coming to Maryland to earn your fame and fortune, the majority of the Free State natives listed below took their talents elsewhere. The exceptions are marked with asterisks. Actors/actresses Bess Armstrong, John Astin, John Wilkes Booth,...

When a Quaker merchant named Johns Hopkins left $7 million in a will to found a hospital and a university in his name, few could have imagined the legacy of that investment would include historic breakthroughs in medicine and physics (as evidenced by a...